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PAPER DONT GROW ON TREES

There are many wrong in ideas on paper, trees and forests, many inaccurate and misleading environmental statements.

Generally we don’t know that European Forests are still growing at a rate of 1.5 million football pitches every year.

Following some facts:

The growth of European forests is confirmed in the MCPFE (Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe) State of Europe’s Forests 2011 report which provides a comprehensive, up-to-date description of the status and trends of forests and forest management in Europe.

17 million hectares of forest growth has been achieved over the last 20 years, a rate which has been calculated as equivalent to 1.5 million football pitches every year.

In the same period 870 million tonnes of CO2 have been removed by European forest; equivalent to about 10% of the Greenhouse Gas emissions.

This is why we tend to think that eBooks are more environmental friendly then printed books but what we don’t know is that Paper industry is a relatively small user of wood. Of the wood extracted from the world’s forests, 53% is used for energy production, 28% is used by sawmills, and around 11% is used directly by the paper industry

Even in today’s digital age many young people states that reading printed text is still more comfortable than reading from a screen but undoubtedly eBooks is recognized as being more environmental as printed books and this is why, among other reasons EBook use is certainly on the rise.

Using Apple’s own published environmental report regarding the iPad Green Press Initiative determined that an I Pad is responsible for 130 kg (287 lbs) of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions over its average lifetime. The average printed book, by contrast, is responsible for only 8.85 lbs.

Single e-book has 70 times the impact of a printed book on human health, owing to particulate matter resulting from energy use and the book’s production

Books can be recycled, E-readers can also be recycled, but it’s a more difficult process.

We guess therefore that both ebooks and printed books have still a long way to coexist together….